


Metal Under Tension

by megaunit



Category: The Orville (TV)
Genre: 'not again', 'oh thats just malloy', 'there he goes', Flight School, Gen, Theoretics is the worst class, Union Point-era, allusions to gordon's angsty past, gordon is actually very smart too, let him fly a heavy cruiser the way he flies a shuttle i am begging you could u imagine, my goodness these men are so dumb, no I will not elaborate, partly text-fic, so they just dont make any moves !! hence gen/&, the unions biggest warship just doing a bunch of flips in open space for No Reason, they are also in love but don't know if the other person feels the same way, vague naruto reference, yet - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-30
Updated: 2020-01-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:27:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22474105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/megaunit/pseuds/megaunit
Summary: “I know it’s scary, Gordon, but. Sometimes you just gotta say ‘time to do it to ‘em,’ and rev the engine a lil. Y’know? Show them you are exactly what you promised- and more! Make sure they know you know what you’re doing, and then blow them out of the water with things they’ve never seen before, for that is the spirit! Of! Doin’ it to ‘em!!”Gordon is in tears by the end of it, hands shaking on the control panel of his shuttle, sides feeling ready to split from laughter.“Who the fuck says that?!” He barely manages down the comms. And Ed’s smooth, stupid voice comes back, as right in front of him Ed’s shuttle does a one-eighty on its nose and rockets on backward faster than Gordon is going forwards. They stay nose to nose as Ed says, in some too spot-on Tom Cruise impression:“It’s the need talking.”“The need for what- oh God damnit.”This illusion of coolness and expertise is shattered by Ed shouting “the need for speed- oh fuck!” and then immediately stalling when he tries to spin the shuttle back to flying forward, gripped by gravity and sent falling a few hundred meters before he can bring everything back in order.
Relationships: Gordon Malloy & Ed Mercer (The Orville)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8





	Metal Under Tension

**Author's Note:**

> Or,
> 
> A story of how Gordon has a hyperfixation on purchasable holograms of shuttles, hides a shitty history that he’s definitely not thinking about every day, and exceeds everyone’s expectations (and made his piloting teacher literally eat his hat, at least the dude had a sense of humor) despite seriously doubting himself, in four parts. 
> 
> (Or, I listen to Danger Zone once, take it at face-value, completely ignoring the weird maybe-he-wants-to-fuck-a-plane, maybe-it’s-just-about-sex theme this song has, and go “it’s Gordon! He flies things! He goes into danger zone! It’s!! Gordon!!!!!”)
> 
> HELLO !!!! OH DEAR I AM REALLY UPLOADING THIS !  
> !!! OH NO !!1 HI !!
> 
> THIS IS AIMING TO BE AN 10000% EMOTION/ANGST FREE FIC!!! OR WELL LIKE MINOR EMOTIONS/ANGST!!!! ITS ALSO VERY STUPID. ITS VERY STUPID CUZ YOU KNOW ITS TIME TO DO IT TO EM. I AM CONCUSSED STILL!! SO I HOPE THIS IS LIKE. LEGIBLE ENOUGH TO BE ON PAR WITH MY OTHER WILDASS PLOTLESS FICS!
> 
> whassup I return from what, almost a year of silence because my emotions have been down! The! Toilet! So! We wont have any big ol cryin/yelling scenes here, no siree, just a good old shenanigan or two… I am also going to say this belongs in a longer fic I will Some Day get around to finishing off <3 I love UP-era ed/gord and this... good. this is good shit. this is good shit for me and I hope it is good shit for you too. 
> 
> There are some current-time memes and jokes and shit but hey. I don’t care. I thought it all up on a ten minute car drive because Loggins’ ‘Danger Zone’ played on the local radio and I went Fuckin BuckWild My Dudes so we get what we get, I RELEASED THE THOTS so please enjoy <3 and any comments will be loved and replied to
> 
> [oh AND I just saw yesterday , seth donated 1M$ to the Irwin family zoo and theyre building an intensive care unit and calling it the Perry MacFarlane ward after his mother , which is some good fuckin news.. in bad news help , our country is burning , aaaaaaaaaa]
> 
> final disclaimer! this is really stupid! i mean! its so stupid really like it was written mostly while i was/am concussed and its just! aaaaa! okay im done

\- i -

“The course has an average time of six minutes, they said,” Gordon grumbles to himself, watching his feet as he walks, eyes lazy as they track the changes of his shadows, passing and growing where he walks from streetlight to streetlight, “the course record is four and a half minutes, they said…”

He kicks at the smooth stone path. So perfect his foot jars and slips, so reminiscent of fingers over a glassy control panel that it makes Gordon want to scream. Instead, he growls: “if you beat the course record I will eat my hat, Cadet Malloy, they said. Well, motherfucker. Prepare to eat your fucking-”

“Gordon!”

He puffs out a loud breath, kicking at the ground and nearly tripping himself up.

“Stupid fucking ground, fuck you, I’ll fucking show you,” he says with no anger or real malicious intent. After one more kick, he stops his stomping and turns to face Ed. Behind his friend sits the shadow of warehouse 42, the main hub of Union Point’s Flight School, a _warehouse_ (the engineers get a damn hyperdome, and don’t even get him started on the _botanists_ ), its blocky figure looming like a taunt. A haunting, monumental darkness that could swallow Gordon up at a moments notice, “fucking Flight School, fuck you, fuck.”

A very unfussed, happy Ed Mercer slings an arm around his neck, drags him around to keep walking the way he had been in the first place. To the bared map of stars above, to the lights that dot the bridge over the Muhheakantuck, to the calm ripples of the water running underneath it- Ed states:

“Well. _That_ was a load of shit!”

“Right?!”

Gordon is so glad he’s friends with Ed. “What the _fuck_ , Marcos telling me I can’t fly faster than him! He’s _eighty_ \- _bitch_! I’m gonna show him.”

“You sure are. Just like Marcos is always saying- you gotta go above, you gotta take it a step up- you gotta _do it to ‘em_!”

“Yeah!” He cheers, punching the air above them. Flight classes always leave them in a high-like mood, weirdly hyped- probably Marcos’s fault. If that old man is good at one thing, it’s keeping everyone’s spirits high and their attention engaged. Ed, copying, lets out his own shout that feels a little too-loud for the time of night, not that either of them care:

“ _Fuck_ yeah!”

Ed is two years Gordon’s senior, close to finishing in his fifth year, and is arguably more rebellious than Gordon could ever hope to be. In a dormant, noble-criminal, Robin-Hood-ish and above-and-beyond sort of way (do not ask what they did with Gordon’s father’s ashes. Do not. It’s a miracle they got away with it in the first place). Case in point, Ed goes on to say, “there are always the M-Post shuttles if you wanna practice. If anyone sees, you can say it was in preparation for the run! As long as you don’t go out of perimeter, and can justify it was for-”

“Hold on, Ed, whoa, hold on-” putting on a sarcastic tone of shock, Gordon pushes away from Ed. They stop walking, “-are you telling me… To _steal_ a Union _shuttle_?”

Now, to anyone who is not Gordon or Ed (or one particular individual named Jimmy Shatner), this would seem like some innocuous inside joke. However, Gordon and Ed had in fact stolen a Union Shuttle not a few weeks prior to this night (to prove a point to one individual named Jimmy Shatner, for reasons that will remain mysterious, other than that ‘Jimmy Shatner has a stick so far up his butt he can’t lean with his fucking turns let alone go against the rulebook for more than a second without spontaneously combusting’ –Gordon Malloy, 2395).

He can only hold Ed’s gaze for a couple of seconds, before they’re both howling with laughter.

Ed steps towards him slightly and Gordon falls in, letting Ed put his arm back around him and lead him on. He hums.

“How’re you going with Theoretics?”

“Fucked. Ed, _eff-you-see-kay-ee-dee._ Fucked and I hate it.”

“Don’t worry. It gets better next year.”

“You _hate_ Theoretics though.”

“Yeah, _next year_. Fourth year is great. Abols! Sarr’s Whirlpools- oh, and messing with Quantum reversals. You even get to mess with trionial physics in the manipulator- do you know what happens to muscle tissue in that shit? It-”

“It cooks and eats itself, yeah, I heard,” Gordon laughs along with him, taking Ed’s distracted smile in while he’s too busy laughing at himself.

His gentle beginnings of crow’s feet and his short teeth and those stupid dimple-y lines near the corners of his lips and even the hunch of his shoulders when he does a laugh too powerful to hold up against, and Gordon doesn’t remember when he started staring at Ed’s face as much as he does these days but here he is, staring at Ed (which, for the record, is not Gordon’s fault at all, really). With a sigh, Ed tilts his head back, looking skyward for a moment.

“Fourth year Theoretics is _great_. Last year of freedom- fifth year is just fucked all-round.”

“… Except for piloting?”

Ed brings his head down, doesn’t look over at Gordon, but he can tell Ed feels he’s being stared at, and for a decent half a minute the walk without saying anything. The best-worst feeling fills Gordon’s stomach. If Ed can’t say something right away, he’s either uncomfortable (which he is not, Gordon knows an uncomfortable Ed, because an uncomfortable Ed _will_ _let you know_ ) or giving it serious thought (so much thought that a lot of blood goes to his head, huh, funny that, what could it all mean).

“Except for piloting, but only because I get to watch you and Marcos shit-talk each other.” Is eventually all Ed says, so Gordon elbows him, calls him a _“cheesy motherfucker,”_ and comes up with some bullshit about Orrin needing his help and that he has to go right now, immediately. Ed swears at him and makes him promise to send an invite if he decides to practice the course at M-Post.

Orrin is, thankfully, not in the dorm when Gordon gets there. He’s free to throw himself at his Inter-dimensional Theory report and forget all about Ed Mercer’s maybe-flirting, maybe-just-being-nice bullshit he’s been doing almost since the day they met. Theoretics, the cruel bitch mother it can be, is for that very reason one of Gordon’s best friends when it comes to pushing all other thoughts out of his head.

Early in the morning, Gordon couldn’t accurately tell you since his eyes aren’t one-hundred percent online and the light of the PADD does not help, he makes the unfortunate decision to message Ed.

**_“GOM: butt realyy shoullkd i b doing thiss >?”_ **

**_“GOM: aretn teacher-studenent bets ilegfal or somthiggn”_ **

After hours of scouring his brain for another way around his puzzle of a paper, his brain is a little fired. A lot fried. Also, his fingertips hurt. And he’s tired.

_“EDM: Dude.”_

**_“GOM: what”_ **

_“EDM: Nothing man but shit I nearly fell in the Muhheakantuck.”_

**_“GOM: whyyyyyyyare you outisdied”_ **

_“EDM: It’s my day off Gord you know I run early.”_

**_“GOM: i thought you slpept in……”_ **

_“EDM: Can’t a man just fucking go for a run, what’s wrong.”_

**_“GOM: no no whatswrongg whith YOU dude who runs at”_ **

**_“GOM: the no sun time”_ **

**_“GOM: im sad comforrrtttt”_ **

_“EDM: It’s too hard to be sad at this time of the morning.”_

**_“GOM: youre outrunnnnnning ur sadness as we speak…”_ **

_“EDM: Not all of us have complex coping mechanisms, Gord.”_

**_“GOM: bold of you to assume i have coping mechs…….”_ **

_“EDM: What about hand-drawing 4D star charts? That’s definitely one.”_

_“EDM: You do it when you’re stressed. And between assignments. As if it’s easy, which it is not, so, yeah no that’s one. That counts. Hah.”_

**_“GOM: …. bold of you to assume i have more than one coping mechanism”_ **

**_“GOM: i mean.. my addiction to model shuttles is pretty much a coping mechanism actually”_ **

**_“GOM: god damnint i played myself”_ **

_“EDM: Is it though?”_

_“EDM: That’s just a collection, right? Does that really count?”_

**_“GOM: eXCUSUE”_ **

**_“GOM: you know how many digi-models i have ed?!!?”_ **

_“EDM: No?”_

**_“GOM: do u have any idea how many fuckin”_ **

**_“GOM: ninety two!”_ **

**_“GOM: thats where my student loans go!!!! thats why youre always buying us drinks!!!!!!!”_ **

**_“GOM: FUCKING”_ **

**_“GOM: DIGI”_ **

**_“GOM: MODELS”_ **

**_“GOM: the ONLYperson i knowwith a bigger coolection is FUCKING MARCOS ANDndD”_ **

**_“GOM: THATSS BECAYSE HE TOLDD ME WHEN HE CAUGHT ME LOOKIGN AT ONE IN CLASS”_ **

**_“GOM: LIKE ITSS SOMETHING TO BE PROUD OF THAT MOTHERFUCKER”_ **

**_“GOM: oh no”_ **

Ed stops replying for an hour, doing what Gordon assumes is more self-inflicted exercise.

Breathing bow much easier than before and his mind quiet enough to drift, he’s sinking off into some lucid, peaceful space that incorporates Orrin getting up and heading out in a way that doesn’t wake him, as it usually would. Orrin doesn’t even throw a pillow at him- their usual pact for making it to classes on time, not out of laziness or hung-over-ness, but out of overworking. In Gordon’s case. Orrin is a shitbag sometimes.

This morning, he is blessed with non-shitbag-Orrin and curls up around his pillow, hoping to get a couple more minutes before his alarm goes off-

_PING!_

“I thought I muted you,” he slurs, grasping for the PADD lost in the sheets somewhere around his legs. After a poor attempt at excavation, Gordon gives up and sits up, patting down the blankets when another monotonous _PING_ sounds.

_“EDM: You will never know how close I was to pissing myself mid-run. You shit. You fucking nerd. I hope you drowned in your holograms in your fucking sleep.”_

_“EDM: What the fuck is a digimodel anyway?”_

**_“GOM: ED I”_ **

**_“GOM: FUCK”_ **

**_“GOM: ED YOU HAVE TO HEAR WHAT I HAVE TO SAY ABOUT ALL THESE FUCKING DIGI MODELS MAN”_ **

A thunder-crack of a knock has him falling out of bed.

Ed’s wheezing, laughing attempts at stringing a sentence come next. Buck naked, Gordon panics and pulls around for the closest outfit he can find from the floor.

_“Get dressed and tell me about them on the way! We’re late for Processes!!”_

“Fuck Processes!” Gordon shouts back, somehow succeeding at pulling a shirt onto his legs. “Fuck Tuesdays! And fuu _uuuu_ uuuuck Marcos!”

_“You’ll kill his record!”_

“I’m killing _him_ so I can inherit his fucking- digi-collection- motherfucker-” in his haste to get his legs free, he tears the shirt almost completely in half, “fuck, on a scale from extra credit to expelled- naked in class?”

 _“Definitely expelled!”_ Is Ed’s response, more of a squeak-toy noise than any sort of human voice or language.

“Fuck pants, too,” Gordon mutters, finally getting a hold of some bronze space pants to go with the boring black polo.

Just outside his dorm door is Ed, bouncing on his toes, shoving Gordon ahead of him with a bright flush over his cheeks, gabbling _“come on, don’t give a reason for Marcos to pick on you more than he already does.”_ Cackling, hitting at Ed as he’s pushed onward to the exit, he lets himself be hustled and bustled all the way to warehouse 42. He can’t even begin to lay out his digi-model collection because Ed is moving them so fast and he _had_ just woken up, what the fuck, Ed.

They settle into their seats as Marcos is walking through the door, clearing his throat and welcoming everyone. He notes on a few things he’d noticed overnight, little anecdotes that have people asking questions and making comments on things wholly unrelated to the topic of flight. Ed has already kicked his feet up onto their shared desk, PADD open to a completed sketch that describes how their quantum space-travel works. He starts underneath on a new one depicting Nal’s mechanics, a species that found punching holes in space-time easier than folding it. Gordon had already handed his diagram in (the day it was administered, because he’d been drawing that kind of thing all over his schoolwork since year four), so he kicks back as well, and watches Ed’s stylus flit here and there and take new colours and erase lines while they wait for class to start.

Marcos finally calls for everyone’s attention to this morning’s topic, highlighting the words _‘who would win in a fight between RTGs and DROs’_. Gordon’s hand is the first one up, and Marcos sighs. Nearly everyone sighs.

“Dynamic Rotor Operators would lose-” he starts without being asked, “they’re really heavy and inefficient compared to Thermoelectric Generators- people only like them because they don’t use radioactive materials and instead use kinetic energy generated from-”

“That’s bullshit,” someone from the other side of the room cuts him off. _Andrews_. That bastard who grew up on an exploration ship and does not hesitate to inform everyone he meets of that fact. “Generators are so outdated, how can you say they’re more efficient than Rotors? Rotors were literally designed to replace atomic fusion- fusion in general, until Dysonium became a thing.”

And as Gordon opens his mouth to say, _no, first of all, Rotors were actually made for comfort and leisure because they are a) quieter, b) less risky, and c) generate less heat than Generators, and then the Union jumped on board because who needs more nuclear waste, so jot that the fuck down,_ but another classmate is already saying those exact things so Gordon can save his breath.

The debate carries on around them, and even Ed throws his bit in, _“there’s no argument, DROs were always going to be a gap-filler when it came to fueling spacecraft. We’re back to using fusion, anyway- RTGs were our first big step out there, and Dysonium brought a stable and simple solution to the ‘too radioactive’ argument, while still providing enough power. Rotors are basically glorified exercise bikes with an AI pedaling it. All the chunkiness and noise of an RTG engine makes enough energy to power shields and cloaks that will stop pretty much anything from detecting it, too._ ”

Marcos asks Ed to never use the world ‘chunkiness’ to describe a ship. The whole class as a collective then begin the argument anew, now describing RTGs as ‘chunkies’.

Gordon looks around at his classmates, at the walls adorned with old panel setups and older models of spaceships. Hears Marcos start calling RTGs ‘chunkies’ as well- and when he moves on to the timeline of fusion-based engines, forgoes the word entirely and draws in a lumpy circle to represent the late 2000s.

This is the best place in the world.

Not just because Flight School the only thing Gordon has ever wanted to do with his life, but also because between their two-year gap, it’s the only class he and Ed share, and fucking damnit, Ed is right, he loves railing on Marcos, too.

\- ii -

Naturally, Gordon shoots Ed a message from his PADD as soon as he starts to psych himself out.

Naturally, this is after about an hour of stressing at the shuttle field at M-Post, thankfully quiet on a Friday afternoon, when everyone is (should be) drinking or chilling out or throwing themselves into the Muhheakantuck for luck on next week’s assessments.

Naturally, Gordon writes and re-writes the message until it doesn’t make any sense and is vaguely positive.

**_“GOM: dude. m-post. gonna do it to em.”_ **

He’s seriously considering _not_ doing it to ‘em, and instead jumping into a shuttle to cruise around for a while. Clear his head. Get pulled up for use of shuttles in non-authorized ways. Be sent to the Vice-Chancellors, _“this is the sixth time we have had to reprimand you, Cadet Malloy, if this-”_

His PADD pings at him.

_“EDM: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”_

_“EDM: I’M A RUNNIN!!!!!!!!!!! WAIT FOR ME!!!!!”_

Gordon smirks, despite the turmoil and the panic and the million terrible scenarios he’s running through his head about getting expelled and going back home and. All that fun stuff.

**_“GOM: run faster”_ **

_“EDM: DON’T DO IT TO EM WITHOUT ME!”_

Instead of pacing and worrying- well, instead of pacing, the worrying doesn’t exactly go away, ever -Gordon sits in the grass and, after a second of deliberation, falls to lie on his back.

It’s a sunny, clear afternoon. Sub-optimal flight conditions. Some high clouds would be great, but the atmosphere just doesn’t have it in it to conjure any up. Ed would suggest to call and ask the Atmospherics Tower, but Gordon isn’t going to go through the trouble to ask for something he probably isn’t allowed to ask for, and then potentially get into shit for it.

Besides. Practice in varying conditions make you a better pilot, and all that shit.

He shuts his eyes against the sun, low in the sky. Honestly. This is _the worst_ time to be flying on a clear day.

It’s quite literally the least of Gordon’s worries right now. Is there a diagnosis for post-partum-type depression but with assignments? He’d just sent in his first draft- a _draft_ –to his Theoretics lecturer for feedback. Usually this wouldn’t be allowed, but Gordon is sweet and the rules don’t apply to him all the time. When they do, it’s incredibly inconvenient. When they don’t it’s like, _eh, this might as well happen, cool_. Point is- letting go of five-thousand words of refined ideas is like losing a limb, and awaiting feedback for a major assessment when it isn’t even the actual submission is gut-churning. It raises all sorts of unreasonable questions, like:

_What if I hadn’t done this? ‘Cuz if she tells me it sucks, and if I hadn’t had the opportunity- I would’ve been submitting something super shit. And,_

_What if she hates it! What if she thinks I’m not ready to use the material I got the fucking convener’s permission to use? What if she tells me she’s going to tell the convener and they’ll take away my access to the charts? And,_

_I have special access so that must mean I’m above average so if this is anything under an eighty I am going to drop out and work on my grandparent’s farm until I Turn Eighty._

Totally irrational stuff like that. You know, the usual.

**_“GOM: duuuuude cant do it to em. not today.”_ **

He sends it, and not a second later, hears a distant _PING_ of a PADD.

A moment of silence.

Then:

“Bull- _shit_!”

Gordon’s heart hurts all at once, and he’s smiling at the sky before he even realizes he’d started laughing.

“Ed, if I die…”

Tom’s Bar has a thin atmosphere, despite being the most densely packed place at Union Point. It stinks of sweat and their syrup-heavy cocktail jug and the beer on tap that’s left in rings on all the tables, “give me a traditional Viking funeral.”

Ed’s fist hits the table in wordless protest at something he obviously hasn’t registered in his brain yet. Gordon punches at Ed’s fist, missing it by a few centimeters. He would’ve sent Ed’s old beer spilling all over him if there were any left in the glass. Squinting at the rolling tumbler, then at Gordon, Ed moves his mouth around to copy and understand Gordon’s words. When they click, he squints but in more of a judgmental, ‘why would you do this’ manner, instead of drunken confusion.

Gordon’s head spins when Ed speaks (insert here: something about alcohol making all your true feelings stronger, or your usual reactions to things way more powerful due to lack of inhibition, or whatever).

“… You’re… Gord,” sighing, though Gordon can tell Ed’s going to go with it, the man across from him speaks slowly, looking around the room as if someone were listening in, “you’re from Newton, New Jersey. I don’t think I can-”

“You gotta promise me, I’m a dying man- I’ll go out in a blaze-”

“I’m not gonna burn your body-”

“On the Muhheakantuck.” They say together.

Ed picks up his glass and puts it rim-down on the table. Gordon finds himself watching as if it’s the most interesting thing he’s ever seen. Maybe it’ll be a magic trick.

Ed fills the glass with margarita mix.

_Wait._

Gordon’s memory must smash-cut to them staggering out, apologizing over their shoulders to the staff on that night, because the rest of their conversation is lost to whatever madness had ensued after Ed poured a liter and a half of green, alcoholic slushy mix all over the place. He vaguely pieces together flames, and that bastard Requi from Ed’s Ancient History class holding a lighter, and the cheering of _“burn baby burn”,_ and Ed screaming _“this is how we die, are you fucking happy,”_ and as Gordon falls into his bed, he thinks _yeah, I’m pretty fucking happy._

\- iii -

They’re up in the air the next day, as well.

It has been six days since Gordon stated his intent to beat the Advanced Piloting course record to his teacher, the current holder of said record of the course. Fifth years are only required to pass the intermediate course, and can opt to do the advanced for extra credit. And what is Gordon, a fool? Why wouldn’t he do the extra credit work for piloting- the very thing he’s always dreamed of doing since he was a tiny kid.

Six days since, one day to go. It is a Saturday and by all rights they should be getting high in his and Orrin’s dorm, Orrin absent as Gordon times these things to be, and working out a chunk of exam study while completely off-planet on Orrin’s space shrooms.

Childhood friends rock.

“ _Watch it!”_ Ed is shouting through the comms, and Gordon is thrown back into the present.

It’s a Saturday.

It’s cloudy up high, perfect visibility at midday.

And, oh yeah, he and Ed are practicing nose-turns at a little over five-hundred kilometers per hour, Gordon was supposed to be doing one and Ed was supposed to be flying in front, monitoring.

Except Ed isn’t in front of him anymore-

“Ah fuck!”

Gordon pulls up just in time, narrowly missing the weather pylon.

_“Let’s stop?”_

“Yeah,” Gordon drags at the thruster sliders, pokes the automatic to off, just to hear Ed huff at him through the comms. He flips it back to active, “I- dude, I got lost in thought. My bad.”

_“What thought?”_

Gordon hates not being able to see Ed.

The next best thing is doing what he’d done all though his teen years-

He talks to the sky.

“What if I don’t beat Marcos’s record?” At this, Ed huffs again, _“c’mon, Gord,”_ and, yes, that isn’t the point and Ed knows it, “I- I’m stressed out, man. There’s a million more things I gotta do for my Theoretics paper, that fucking Collective Biology group project has fallen on me completely because no one can get their heads out of their fucking asses, I almost fucked up the main 45 simulator because Ban'yt had to show their supervisors our program _because_ the research heads needed a prototype for funding and it wasn’t ready and-”

 _“Spiraling, Gord,”_ he hears a tapping through Ed’s end, and can imagine Ed rapping his knuckles on his window, like it’ll get Gordon’s attention, _“spiraling. Ban’yt wasn’t angry, were they?”_

“No, they weren’t but I could tell they were disappoi-”

_“And the research headers didn’t cut the funding?”_

“Not- _no_ , they said that up until the programming went wonky, it was fine-”

_“And the group project, what’s your professor’s email?”_

“I- Ed, I’m not gonna-”

_“You’re gonna email them by yourself or I’m going to make you or, worse, I will email them for you-”_

“Ed-”

 _“You are meant to be here, Gordon!”_ Ed is just about laughing at him, and really, Gordon gets how ridiculous it is for him to still be feeling like this.

Sure, it’s been three years since he’d stepped off of that bus with nothing but a backpack and his clothes and what he could get of his father’s excessive credit debt. He’d made it into the specialty course of Union Point’s Flight School by the skin of his teeth and his first year was nothing short of a nightmare. Learning how his mind really _worked_ , how he had to plan around things like a social life (hah), and assessments beyond the scope of high school (hahaha), and attention from people who could rocket him into a high-paid career or bury him in desk-work for the remainder of his days (it would have been easier to stay in Newton, he would think, and sometimes still does). He’s been working through so much, for so long, and so far away from his hometown that it’s stopped feeling like a home, by this point. Like a majority of the kids that roll through U.P., the goal is Space. And space is a long way from home, so the homesickness dies off pretty quick.

Sometimes, though, feeling like he doesn’t beling really doesn’t feel that ridiculous. It feels very, very real.

Lots of students here come from jaded backgrounds. He shouldn’t feel so alone. He shouldn’t, now that he has been here for three years, and has been praised for all sorts of things he’d always thought were just normal ways of thinking and doing, and has made all sorts of dents in all sorts of social spheres, small though those dents are.

It’s just in little moments. Where he doesn’t have anyone with him. Maybe he’d had a bad encounter with a teacher or another student. Or maybe he’d gotten frustrated with a project, or a grade, or even one of his mapping devices. Maybe he was just shy of enough credits to buy the Ultra Rare Purple Twilight Edition of the Arkson’s Shuttle- fuck, who knows, certainly not Gordon. But, in those miniscule few minutes that turn into hours that turn into however long it is until he starts talking to someone that isn’t himself (usually Ed, though sometimes Ed doesn’t count as a different person), Gordon hates the world.

He hates where he’d come from, he hates how he’d grown up, he hates his schooling and even the start of U.P. where he felt adrift in the stormy ocean of tertiary learning and Orrin wouldn’t even throw him a fucking buoy, let alone pull him into his life raft so they could share and weather it out together. He hates how at ease Ed can be with some things, and feels some odd and guilty pleasure whenever Ed struggles with something Gordon doesn’t. A tiny, vindictive voice that Gordon hates as well, since it sounds so much like his father’s voice.

And fuck, Gordon hates his _fucking_ father, for making him feel like he wasn’t supposed to be destined for anything, wouldn’t be anything more than a drunk ship mechanic. Wouldn’t make it out of _fucking_ _Newton_ , if he wasn’t smart enough about it, which, his father always made sure he told Gordon _just_ how smart he thought he was.

Whenever Ed tells him, _‘you are meant to be here,’_ it can be a little hard to believe. As if reading his mind, Ed shouts: _“believe it_ ,” and executes a backflip without letting the shuttle drift an inch up, down, or sideways.

“Man,” Gordon sighs at him, routinely shoving all his thoughts back into a neat pile because, really, find a day in Gordon’s life where he doesn’t think about how shitty things have been and could be, “be careful with these. N-9s, they stall real quick in atmosphe-”

 _“Dysonium doesn’t stall!”_ Ed says, knowing full well that Dysonium isn’t the problem here. He does another flip. Gordon snorts at his antics.

“It’s not even part of the course, dude, really. C’mon.”

 _“You’re not even part of the course!”_ Ed charges his shuttle at Gordon, their proximity sensors going off and the automatic evasion system pushing them apart before they collide. _“Outta my way, My-bro-nium.”_

“Ed, no.”

Gordon can’t chuckle at that. He’s not allowed to. He’ll have to arrest himself if he does.

_“What did the cow-ium say to its child when he went to his first day of school?”_

“Cow-ium, what the f-”

_“Bye-son-ium.”_

“Ed.”

Ed doesn’t even respond. He pulls the shuttle into a continuous forward spin on the spot. Gordon watches the engine flicker and almost give when he hits the certain point of his spin where the engines can’t do anything for him. “Ed, stop trying to stall!”

_“I’m all about try-sonium-ing.”_

“Oh my fucking-”

Okay, that one got Gordon to smile. Damn Ed and his annoying Ed-ness. “I’m gonna disengage auto and crash my shuttle into yours for real.”

 _“My auto will still be on, though, so,”_ he zips his shuttle left and right, thankfully while the right way up, _“you gotta be quick!”_

“You’re an asshole, you know that?”

_“I’m a perfectly respectable pilot.”_

“You are a terrible pilot!”

_“Yeah, but it’s all in the name of doin’ it to ‘em, Gord!”_

“Do not quote Marcos’s ancient magic to me right now!”

 _“Nah nah nah, see, the whole point. Of doin’ it to ‘em, is that! You!”_ Gordon is going to get a fucking headache from this- from both the stupid first-commandment their teacher had decreed (as a _joke_ , Ed), and holding in his laughter to make Ed think this isn’t as ridiculously hilarious as it actually is. _“Do it to ‘em! You do everything you’ve ever wanted, and you do it to show everyone who’s ever told you you couldn’t, or shouldn’t, or wouldn’t be able to! I know it’s scary, Gordon, but. Sometimes you just gotta say ‘time to do it to ‘em,’ and rev the engine a lil. Y’know? Show them you are exactly what you promised- and more! Make sure they know you know what you’re doing, and then blow them out of the water with things they’ve never seen before, for that is the spirit! Of! Doin’ it to ‘em!!”_

Gordon is in tears by the end of it, hands shaking on the control panel of his shuttle, sides feeling ready to split from laughter. He watches as Ed engages his engine and starts flying forward, around Gordon and off towards M-Post, not even a speck on the horizon. He gives chase, and only manages to catch up thanks to the tracking feature of the shuttle’s automation.

“Who the fuck says that?!” He barely manages down the comms. And Ed’s smooth, stupid voice comes back, as right in front of him Ed’s shuttle does a one-eighty on its nose and rockets on backward at the exact speed Gordon is going forwards. They stay nose to nose as Ed says, in some too spot-on Tom Cruise impression:

_“It’s the need talking.”_

“The need for what- oh God damnit.”

This illusion of coolness and expertise is shattered by Ed shouting “ _the need for speed- oh fuck_!” and then immediately stalling when he tries to spin the shuttle back to forward, gripped by gravity and sent falling a few hundred meters before he can bring everything back in order.

\- iv -

“It’s the day of assessment,” Ed says to Gordon, unnecessarily, since they’re at the field, waiting for Marcos to turn up and begin their assessed courses.

“Sure is.” He replies. Bites his lip. Stares up at the clouding over sky.

Atmospherics does this for assessment days.

Gordon kind of wishes they didn’t do it, just so he can do this in poor conditions and beat the fuck out of his teacher’s coveted speed record.

It is one weird mix of resentment, anger, and over-confidence he’s got going on.

Perfect. Most of Gordon’s best works have arguably been done in while feeling like this, and he lets Ed know, “I am going to shit all over this, dude,” just a little too loudly. Someone standing near them coughs awkwardly.

They were the only people talking at that exact moment.

Gordon really hates this shit, sometimes.

Everyone else seems to start interacting again after his outburst earlier. They exchange nervous glances, little laughs and the occasional ‘it’ll be fine’s and ‘oh I’m so –insert your species’ common expletive here-’d. And then there’s Ed, who is staring off at the middle distance and definitely rerunning through the mental map of the course in his usual, methodical way. And, of course, Gordon, who also stares into the middle distance but with the heat of a thousand white dwarf stars, burning to prove someone wrong.

The group students aren’t left in anticipation for long. Time feels like it’s moving in stops and starts and Ed goes quiet when their teacher gets here, overpowered by the waves of _I’m going to fucking crush you_ Gordon is exuding. Once Marcos arrives, it takes some time getting past his awkward lunchtime-nap jokes and his too-loud-to-be-unintentional murmuring about some ‘special request’ at the staff room food bay which, after questionings from some of the overeager students standing closest to him, he adamantly refuses to tell them about.

With his own air of anticipation and something Gordon can only call a ‘hope for vengeance’, Marcos starts his PADD up and connects to the holographic system.

He looks up from the PADD. Gordon almost vibrates out of his skin when he looks right at him.

“Cadet Mercer.”

And, it’s as if fucking Marcos makes a point, by asking Ed to go first, so Gordon wishes him quiet luck, and hits him on the back when he doesn’t respond after a few moments.

He comes back with a time of 05:01:22, to the cheers of their classmates and the high praise of Marcos. When he bounces his way back to Gordon, he’s all sharp elbows and shoulder bumps, waiting with excitement as the teacher inputs his score. Gordon is going to go next. Of course Gordon is going next, Marcos always goes by standing or sitting order, and Gordon is right next to Ed, who is at the end of the line, so obviously-

“Cadet Mraf.”

A bobble-headed Creylioti gets up, shaking at their knees, and smiles just as unstably at their friend’s calls for good luck as they make their way to the shuttle. They are on Gordon’s opposite side, and _Ed is at the end of the_ line, and this was absolutely a purposeful choice.

Ed, fuck him, starts to chuckle when Gordon mentions this.

Mraf clocks in at 08:54:59, barely constituting a pass but it’s under nine minutes, and Marcos takes it. 

Gordon’s eye starts to twitch.

The rest of their assessments go by in the same sort of fashion. Everyone returns with varying times, most around 06:00:00, most over, very few in the 05 mark and even fewer below 05:30:00 with Ed, who still has the top mark by the time Marcos reaches the very opposite end of the line. Each time they take off and begin, Gordon estimates their times.

By the time they were halfway done, he had it down to a science. Cadet Faler’s name was called, and Gordon said to Ed ’06:50’. Seven minutes later, Faler crossed the line at 06:50:02. Ed called bullshit. So Gordon kept going. A few times it’s seconds, though he never misses the mark more than ten, each time earning a quiet laugh and a ‘you’re ridiculous’ from Ed in some unbelieving tone that Gordon is actually happy to hear. He’s pretty content, hearing it from Ed- usually, it’s a sarcastic and judgmental sound, ‘you can’t do that’ or ‘yeah, of course you can’.

His stomach is wrapping into itself, knotted up with the rest of his insides. Cadet Zes lands, rocky until the last leg touches down bang on the 07:34:40 Gordon missed by one second and thirty milliseconds, the milliseconds added only because Ed challenged him to. They’re clucking at one another, Gordon to hide his nerves, and Ed to help with Gordon’s nerves, presumably, when Marcos puts his PADD down and calls for their attention. Gordon’s heart buys a one-way ticket into his mouth.

Did he and Ed get into trouble while practicing? Why weren’t they notified? Is Gordon not allowed to fly the course because of his stupid not-really-a-wager with his teacher? Is the teacher going to call him out and make a fool of him-

“One student in particular,” Marcos begins, and is met with a mountainous wave of laughter. He waits silently for them to finish, and Ed steps a little closer to Gordon, if that were possible. Eventually, the fifth years shut up, and Gordon is struck, like he has been all semester, by the fact that he is classmates with people way more advanced than him in many ways. Two years in age isn’t much of a difference.

Two years in schooling at U.P. is the difference between being called on and being moved into a bunker, in a time of crisis. They haven’t used that fact _exactly_ to lord over him their knowledge and expertise, but they’ve shown it in all sorts of other ways, and Gordon is very sick of it. Marcos, finally getting enough quiet to continue, smiles as he reaches into his carry bag, “one student in particular, walked into class on the first day, and told me I had written Byrp’s equation wrong on the projection board.”

Ed smiles, out of nowhere. Smiles at Gordon, then smiles at Marcos, who still won’t look their way, is still looking through his bag. “I had copied it from the very textbook she wrote, and he had taken one step into the hall and shouted ‘who the fuck fucked up the quantitative vectroner section of this shit’ to the room at large, not realizing I was there…” Marcos must find what he’s looking for, letting out a quiet ‘hah’ during his pause, punctuated by snickering from the students. “… Or perhaps he did. He has never hesitated to state facts with the utmost bluntness to me, and he has never been wrong, yet.”

Finally, he looks Gordon’s way, whilst producing his beloved short cap from his bag. Slowly, as if posing a threat, he places it on his head.

Gordon takes back every fear he’s ever had in the past hour or so. No, fuck. The past week is wiped of anxiety, and all he can feel is the culmination of his anger, his excessive study, his practice with Ed.

“Cadet Malloy.” Marcos states, and for some reason, people begin to clap. “I believe it is your turn.”

Always the face of bravado, Gordon strides towards the shuttle.

“Saving the best for last, are you, teach.” He teases. Marcos simply picks his PADD up and waves him off. Gordon can see his smile. He doesn’t know if he hates that.

“Go Gordon!” He hears Ed kinda-shout, and almost trips on the shuttle ramp when he turns back to wave to Ed. He ends up flailing a bit, tripping backwards into the ship. 

It hisses shut, the ramp retracting and the doors sealing. The first thing Gordon does is project the time at the back of the shuttle. The second thing he does is turn the internal lights off, all but the safety ones in the carriers, and the control panel lights. He sits down carefully into the chair, looking through the windscreen at the empty grass in front, and then up to the sky.

The holographs disappear through the mess of clouds. Each particle of light is measured with air-pressure gauges, so students can be reviewed by their accuracy and technique; what controls are used for what will make a difference in the way the ship moves in the air, as well as the speed and the ability to fit to certain maneuvers. As the course is flown, the holographs will respond. Beginning green, the holos will yellow and eventually redden if a segment is consistently done incorrectly.

So far, only one student has gotten into the orange. The rest, yellows and lime.

No one has gotten pure greens.

_Yet._

He takes about half a minute, taking breaths in through his nose, out through his mouth. It is longer than every other student, but he can justify it by the promise that if he does not fuck this up, Marcos will eat his hat. Or, at the very least, suffer some mild humbling.

The twists and turns are familiar even from so far away, and some _pilot-part_ of his brain, as Ed calls it, can see the holographs beyond the cloud cover. The finish line is right behind him, and, looking over his shoulder, Gordon can see it, too, through the solid metal of the shuttle doors: the eight-hundred and ten degree spinout he has to nail in order to be facing the same way as he is now. Every single student, Ed included, came out of the spin at five degrees or more off, and had to re-correct before landing.

He can feel he’s facing precisely the right way. Knows without looking at the bars, the readings, that he’s in the exact same spot everyone else was in to begin with- is in the position he’d started from on every drill he’d done over the weekend, because Ed refused to let him turn off the guidance autos, and of course, Gordon listens to Ed, most of the time.

One good thing about Union tech is that it has an awful lot of automation. Safety nets, aids to avoid any potential damaging movements made by amateurs, since insurance policies don’t cover people under the Universal Mental-age Scoring of twenty-five, blah, blah.

Gordon flips it over to ‘inactive’.

 _God I hope that doesn’t void my ability to pass the course,_ a little, non-pilot part of his brain whispers.

A second later, Marcos’s voice sings through the intercoms:

_“Malloy, turn that back on.”_

His hand flies from the systems’ section to the engine’s, the other coming to rest on the thrusters panel. Takes one look behind him- a red clock reading 14:51 and roughly thirty seconds in, he doesn’t really look long enough.

He rockets straight up, a perfect vertical ascent. The wind is coming from the north-east and Gordon easily pushes the thruster sliders to adjust (something auto would warn him of and provide the correct thruster power percentages to follow), and burns on the ones facing the wind so they’re ready to counter. “Cadet Ma-” Marcos tries again. Gordon hits the mute on his comms. Still rocketing upwards, he waits until the line of holos that stretch out before him are in just the right spot. Hitting the downward thrust, he deadstops. Hangs there for one second. Unmutes the comms.

“Professor Marcos, did I get it right?”

He doesn’t wait for the response. Muting Marcos’s spluttering, he pushes to half-power and angles slightly down to ride the ramp formed by the holos.

The precision segment requires exact adjustments to the direction of the shuttle, as well as slowing and speeding-sensitive sensors to provide feedback on how well- overcautious or brazen -one is able to deal with the sharper twists. Gordon throws that thought right out the window and flies along the ever-green holo path that roughly imitates a Union space-base setup, navigating around imitations of bigger ships and cargo bays. He keeps as constant as he can at two hundred kilometers (right on the regular space-base speed limit), and makes up for a lack of stopping on the upward-facing accelerations by using the thrusters beneath the nose of the ship.

Coupled with overpowering upward and forward thrusters, plus engaging the main drive to rocket up once again- this time looking where he’s going- Gordon completes the emergency exit of space-base areas, and enters the next section of the course.

Segment two is primarily a visualization of how one would approach something like an asteroid belt. Or, with Marcos’s more dark approach, the debris field of a destroyed ship. The holos move in randomized patterns, different every time. If segment one was all about precise, practiced, and known angles, then segment two is absolutely a test to how well one knows those angles.

Contrary to what any sane person- read: his classmates –would do, Gordon speeds up. He finds higher speeds allow for better accuracy when it comes to other moving objects. See it his way.

Something is moving slow, in unpredictable ways. The longer it is left, the more it is able to move. Relative to its speed, something slow moving would, naturally, allow for more movement in these objects. So, following that logic, something fast-moving can avoid the numerous variables that come with course-plotting through something like an asteroid belt.

Simple maneuvers are damaged in their accuracy, when speed is increased. Things like diagonal drifts, counter-orbitals, and even nose-turns suffer in precision.

If you’re not Gordon Malloy.

Taking to the asteroids like a fish to water, he nudges upward and downward, looking six or seven holos ahead for his next move. Mind always a few steps in front of his hands, which are able to keep up out of second nature.

Excessive training has led him to this point. Will lead him beyond it. And Gordon doubts he’ll get into a situation where he’ll have to make his way at breakneck speed through an asteroid belt, so, hey, might as well do it now. One adjustment upward and an excessive barrel roll to end, he comes out of the area ringing green behind him.

The second-last segment is a battle simulation. Gordon hunches forward a little for this one, heart gripping in his excitement.

They are his favorite to do, especially in the simulation halls where he’s piloting a real Union heavy cruiser. His ace record continues to baffle the post-grads who work there most hours of the day on their simulation projects, research, and whatever things post-grads do. They had him hooked up to a brainwave reader one time, just for laughs, since he was there and the dude, Narym, had a project to do with stress and uncertain encounters. There was an ongoing joke, since then, about Gordon completely overthinking things, and managing to sift through to the right thing ninety-nine percent of the time.

Right now, Gordon has a billion routes he can take. Another randomized set of holos, though not as random as the asteroids. Two figures of unidentified crafts are speeding at him on varying chase parameters. This means, the _rates_ of chase/attack and the _degree of following_ will change without warning. In practices, you encounter one or the other, leaving the experience of both chase and attack for practical assessment. The one programmed to chase goes right by him and he sees on the radar how quick it turns, indicating a close follow of at least ten degrees. No subtlety. _Easy to fool_.

He crosses off a few hundred paths. The blocker- meant to stay between him and the ‘exit’ gate flanks, letting him get pretty far before it starts to overtake; that narrows it down considerably. Behind him, his warnings of incoming fire lights up. It’s easy to dodge in a shuttle. Far easier than a decked out cruiser, at least.

The simple shifts go on until he’s shot at from the front. The follower behind him goes wide, ducking upwards. It has a bigger degree of follow, now- maybe around ninety or one hundred degrees. _Even easier to fool_.

Gordon rises too.

He knows the blocker will outmatch him for speed. The following ship will always be behind, so Gordon leads it up, still in the direction of the gate, but just enough to bring the blocking ship with him. It comes to fly even-paced with him once more, shoots a few too-close shots that Gordon hardly manages to avoid. The glittering green gradually, slowly moves across the front window. The ship behind shifts, on a near-full chase once more. Its shots get harder to ignore, but Gordon does it. He waits, and climbs, and keeps one eye on the gate.

 _Bam_. The blocking ship gets too far in front of him. The gate is almost directly beneath him, only a few meters behind. He full-stops and drops.

As his chaser carries on and his follower turns on the fastest possible path it can, the two collide and disappear. Gordon falls and falls with a blast from the main engine, getting through the gate, and.

The big one.

Segment four: emergency planetary exit, followed by emergency landing.

Hitting full main power, nose to the sky to minimize resistance, he shoots up and through the clouds in the blink of an eye. The atmosphere-break is earlier in this simulation, since breaking atmosphere on Earth will always be different to others and thus it isn’t logical to do the full extent of ours, or some bullshit, he doesn’t care.

A mere twelve-hundred meters above the clouds is the stoppage, where the engine needs to be cut, and the shuttle needs to go upright from thrusters and get into ‘orbit’ as fast as it can. Letting go of the speed and trying to slow to an orbit, Gordon doesn’t know what time is any more. He can’t really feel emotion over the pure rush of trying to complete things as fast and smart and accurately as he can. He reaches an acceptable orbit speed and hovers for long enough to set off the holo’s measurers.

Nose down, Gordon does something that is arguably, very stupid.

No comms, at an undetermined point in the sky other than the co-ordinate map and radar scanner that shows other flying objects-

Gordon engages the main engine. His speed falls into red numbers almost instantly. A beeping alarm warns him of excessive speeds, as does another right over the top of the beeps, its screaming klaxon meaning ‘ground approaching, pullup, dickhead’.

But. Marcos said it’s an emergency, _right_?

He breaks the clouds and braces over the thrusters and main shut-down, even though he knows in truth he really doesn’t need to. The nose of the shuttle is aligned near dead-on with the pull-up point. He hardly preps the thrusters. They’ve all been running at one percent, so there will be no engaging lag. Tipping so he’s even with the ground and blasting the downward thrusters, he engages the back and front, one on each side, and enters a spin. He has exactly two whole spins and an extra quarter turn to align the shuttle with the other uniformly parked shuttles spread all around the warehouse lot.

Gordon holds off on putting them up, speeding up the tiniest bit.

What is he, if not dramatic?

The final spin brings him within fifty meters of the teacher, and his quarter turn involves a spot-on deadstop. Before he’s even fully landed, Gordon is standing from his seat and pressing the necessary buttons to open the shuttle’s back. One deep breath, and he turns around.

14:54:11

He can’t help it- he starts shouting. As the door starts its slide open, feeling far slower than usual, Gordon can hear an uproar outside.

The first thing he sees is Marcos, hat in hand and half the brim missing in the shape of a bite-mark. As he will learn once the commotion dies down, Marcos’s special request in the staff food bay was a perfect replica of his usual hat but made out of taffy (he will also learn that Marcos started eating it when Gordon got through the asteroid field, before he’d even completed the course). The second thing he sees is Ed, his PADD up and definitely recording Gordon stepping off of the shuttle ramp. He spreads his arms wide, to the crescendo of the class.

“That was fucking magnificent!” Ed shouts at him above the noise of their classmates.

“Yeah,” Gordon shouts back, and says quieter to Marcos, whose mouth is half-full of the rest of the brim of his hat, “now watch me do it with a heavy cruiser.”

The look on his face gives Gordon more confidence than he thinks is legal.

“If I could, kid, you’d be pushing around a warship in three years’ time.”

\- o -

**Author's Note:**

> I LIED THERE WAS MORE ANGST THAN EXPECTED IM SORRY  
> i sat here for a few mins going.. do i post this.. do i really post this  
> yes  
> yes i do post this  
> apologies for the dumb
> 
> [if anyone wants a visual , whenever i started working on this i'd get all hyped and sit up straighter and go 'alright time to do it to em!' and my dogs would be like "OH WALK ? WALK ? WE GO ? WE GET UP WE GO ?? WE ARE UP LET US GO PAERENT , COME ON WE GO ! WE GO ? BUT YOU SAID-" because thats what i say when we usually walk and let me tell you. i dont know what i was trying to tell you but to my dogs i am so sorry for disrupting your naps every day for the past week and a half]


End file.
